^ I also agree. But not 100%. Not even 50%. And here's why.That video is very directly saying that government is a dictatorship or a monarchy as if it's referring to an individual or individual family. The US government is actually a republic and a democracy. We the people elect our president and our representatives on a national, state and local level and they have term limits. Sure, we can argue the legitimacy of these elections by the people and the "limited" choices we are given from the electoral pool. But we are given the choice of asshole A or asshole B and so on. We are also free to rally our groups and push to promote the choice we like without fear of retaliation from our government, in the United States. This is good and bad. Just as the people can group to promote their choice, so can individuals with endless finances to donate to a campaign. History shows that the choice with the most money to campaign, generally will win the election. Those huge corporations donating millions expect a return on their investment. They bought that politician to make/change laws to fit their agenda. This is where we are today in the US. This country is becoming an oligarchy if we don't limit or get money out of politics. Feel free to call me the "programed" mind of the gov. If they did program me, they did a piss poor job, because I can clearly see and vote against anything I don't agree with. But I also feel the need for the gov, which is why I said I agree, but not 100%.

In regards to the above video. I enjoy listening to a person's ideology, but it's a waste of time if there aren't any solutions given. What are our choices?1. No government, just chaos in the streets?2. Let another body manage the USA, such as the christian church? They are trying to do that now. It shows in our senate seats from the November elections with seats getting gobbled up by wrong wing christian lunatics. 3. Let each state govern themselves? So Georgia can go back to racial separation with white and black drinking fountains? 4. Round up the locals to fix pot holes in the streets and help put out fires? And if they don't volunteer, they get thrown in jail or shot for not being a participant to the local needs. What happens when everyone wants to deliver the mail and no one wants to fix the pot holes? Someone needs to fix the streets or the mail will get very slowly delivered. Who makes those decisions? Coin toss? Short stick has to fix the pot holes?

Bottom line. Remove one power, another will replace it. Or conservative logic, less government, shrink the government! The only problem is that something else will fill the void.

And yes, I understand that there has to be some money in politics to operate. But we need a level playing field. Just think how nice it would be if everyone running to represent us each were limited to the exact same amount of money to run their campaign?

In regards to the above, I really like this interview with Chomsky. Again, not 100%, but damn close. Basically, power needs to prove itself as being legitimate. This is just 10 minutes of it, but there's a link to the full interview.

BLT, "belief" in government, in and of itself, is exactly the same as belief in god. Neither have any basis in reality. Simply writing up a document and getting a bunch of people to sign it does not mean that they actually have any real power... in another one of Larken Rose's videos, he demonstrates the point even better by writing "I have the moral right to rob you" and getting several people to sign it. This is exactly what the declaration of independence is, including the part where they grant themselves the right to levy and collect taxes. There is a saying "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results", well, that is exactly what people have been doing for millennia; voting for yet another corrupt criminal that he or she had no part in putting on the ballot, and expecting freedom and prosperity. The government does not "represent the people", it represents whoever feeds it the most money. It is not working for the interests of the people, it is working for the interests of itself, as it is not actually a democratically elected body of public representatives, but is instead a corrupt gang of thugs who use threats of incarceration or physical harm to shake down the working class for tax money/fines/fees/etc. The upper echelon of government live in lavish splendor, paid for by the toils of the people it claims to represent. They throw innocent people into privately run, for profit slave-labor camps (prisons) because they happen to enjoy smoking weed. They use their hired goons to shoot black kids dead for jaywalking, then simply excuse the racist, sociopathic piece of shit from any wrongdoing. They have brainwashed the people into thinking that they have any real authority over anything. Frankly, I'm sick of it, and wish people would wake the fuck up and start a revolution. Is anarchy the answer? Who knows? We've never experienced it. We've sure been told how bad it is though! I wonder why that is?

like a shark riding on an elephant's back, trampling and devouring everything in its path

Personally I'm in favor of having government for the purpose of shared infrastructure, regulations on food and medicine, and a system of protection and punishment regarding personal property and well-being. I don't think that the US government is the best configuration for that but there are certainly far worse ones out there.

Mark, I really do agree with most of what you're saying. I've read a lot of Rose's articles. He's a typical goof just mimicking Ayn Rand and Huemer, for the most part. He's not saying anything new. To people like Rose, there is no in between. It's either black or white and gray is not an option.

Should we just go live in the wilderness and claim a plot of land as our own with a gun and shoot anyone that walks onto our property?

Should we have a king that takes our money and decides what is or isn't law, like North Korea?

Or should we meet somewhere in between? (the gray area)1. We do need prisons. But weed smokers shouldn't go to prison, even though smoking weed is still illegal in some states. (gray)2. We do need to pay into the system to pay for our infrastructure. But 700 billion a year for our military complex? All of the countries in the world don't spend 700 billion a year combined! Maybe we can trim that down a bit, say like in half?

You see what I'm getting at. It doesn't have to be one way or the other. Rose is just regurgitating the same old selfish crap. A guy that thinks he figured out how to have his cake and eat it too. He wants the comfy life we've all become accustomed to, but doesn't want to pay for it. Hey, I don't want to pay for it either! But I don't want to lose my awesome comfy life, so................

Anarchy's been tried in many places and it's extremely brutal to everyone. It's also inherently unstable. [Somalia. etc.] Dictatorship is the other extreme. It's extremely brutal to anyone it disagrees with or fears. But it's stable for a while. [Nazi Germany, etc.]

There are many other leadership/ government styles, and they all have their strengths and weaknesses. The US at least has some built in checks and balances, in theory, if not always in practice.

^ Mark, I feel you are getting drawn in by fancy anecdotes and obvious similes. First off, the frog in the boiling water has been debunked long ago, so the guy lost my respect almost immediately in that video. Second, he's an obvious libertarian, but doesn't actually know how different an "American" libertarian (the tea party) differs from his ideology he's so tritely explaining. The tea party may be libertarians, but they are not socialists, they are neo-fascists. Third, democracy around the world differs greatly. The USA is actually a republic oligarchy in reality with a democracy republic ideology. It's something being fought against by liberals, independence and even some libertarian groups. Our current system is mostly supported by the republican GOP party which is supported by the libertarian tea party of which is comprised primarily of christian conservatives. Their ideology is biblical law and christian authoritarianism.

So your guy in the video is talking about anarchy being the means to liberty. While our American libertarians are talking about biblical law and authoritarianism for liberty. Two very different things. When other countries fight for biblical law and authoritarianism, we call that terrorism. Anarchy sounds better than terrorism. Liberty sounds better than anarchy.

As I said earlier, I agree with a lot of what was said in both the videos. But they are both fundamentally wrong and just selling an idea that has been tried and fails throughout history. The gray area in-between is the answer. Checks and balances keep us honest.

Well, total anarchy can never work because the world is full of horrible people. I do like the idea of abolishing all laws and only enforcing the one tenet "Do what you want but don't harm any other", but who enforces it? The police? And courts, and jails. And who runs these places? And where does the money needed to run them come from? Oh yeah. I think you could follow pretty much any system of politics or non-politics (anarchy) to it's conclusion, and it always ends up with a few powerful thugs on top basically using the general populace to bankroll their lavish lifestyle. And if you try to stop them, you get killed, and called a terrorist.

like a shark riding on an elephant's back, trampling and devouring everything in its path

My point wasn't really meant to be "it could be worse" so much as there's a middle ground between abolishing government entirely and accepting what we have. If anarchy were a system that worked in reality, then we'd never have developed governments in the first place; however, rule of law has been shown time and again to be necessarily because people are shitty to each other.

To me, the major flaws in the US government are that it makes it way too easy for corporations to have a say in things that help them while hurting natural citizens. Our lobbying rules need to be completely changed, as do our patent and copyright laws. But that's a far cry from wanting to completely abolish the state just because there's a few things wrong with it.

Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. Just rebalance things such that taxes are collected and used fairly.

fluffy wrote:My point wasn't really meant to be "it could be worse" so much as there's a middle ground between abolishing government entirely and accepting what we have. If anarchy were a system that worked in reality, then we'd never have developed governments in the first place; however, rule of law has been shown time and again to be necessarily because people are shitty to each other.

To me, the major flaws in the US government are that it makes it way too easy for corporations to have a say in things that help them while hurting natural citizens. Our lobbying rules need to be completely changed, as do our patent and copyright laws. But that's a far cry from wanting to completely abolish the state just because there's a few things wrong with it.

Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. Just rebalance things such that taxes are collected and used fairly.

I agree with your entire post.

But while I agree that we can't just scrap everything we've developed to this point, I can also see how an overhaul might never happen or be too overwhelming to accomplish.

When I was growing up and in jr. high and high school, I was an anarchist. My reason at the time was because I loved the circle A t-shirts and the Sex Pistols. They were anti-establishment. I liked and played their music. So that means I was too. The cops always hassling me. Those bastards. It wasn't until years later in college that I learned what anarchy really was about. What a dumb kid I was. All it took was a cool symbol and a group I felt a part of to sell me on an ideology. As I learned more, I realized I like some parts about anarchy, but not others. That made me want to learn more about different political platforms and what they stand for.

Skip forward to today. I was never all that interested in how our country was run, as long as I could make a living, pay my bills, take care of my family and just enjoy life. But I always paid attention to the changes around me, always voted and went on with my life. I was part of the status quo.

In just the past couple years, I've started getting interested in politics on a daily basis. I think it has a lot to do with age, but I'm almost positive it has to do with me voting for GW Bush twice. In his last couple years in office, I felt like I was duped. It was the first time in my life I felt like everything I believed in was total bullshit and I felt myself wanting to disassociate myself from the establishment. This time it had nothing to do with cool t-shirts.

All of a sudden, things changed. We have a black guy with socially liberal beliefs running for POTUS. Wow, what is this all about? The economy is shit, Bush threw America under the bus and now a black guy saying all the things I want to hear. Is it just another trick? Are other people possibly sick of the same old crap too and this is a new beginning? Maybe there is hope and change after all? I'm totally voting for this guy!

Now here I am typing this. Obama is in his second term. I do not regret my votes for both of his terms. There are a number of things the Obama admin does that I don't like, but I give him credit for the things he's been able to do with a "do nothing" congress. I feel that both McCain and Romney would have been more GW Bush and we the 99% would be in worse shape than we are now. But who really knows. I don't consider Obama "knives in the legs". Maybe a bee sting on my ass, but not knives in the legs.

What are we going to do now? I just read today that congress is 80% male, 80% white and 92% christian. How in the hell does that equate to representing the people? I think the Asian Buddhist woman at my favorite restaurant might not feel she is represented. (extreme and bad example)

The only way to make a change is to do what was granted to us as a nation in our constitution. We need a revolution. Not a revolution with with two opposing sides with guns, but one with a lot of people with the same goal. If things get bad enough, people will stand together. It doesn't have to be one way or the other and it doesn't have to be violence. It has to be a compromise. We have a great political system that has worked, it just needs the direction changed a bit.

The first order of business is to get money out of politics. This country is now under the control of billionaires, not the people. To overturn Citizens United, we need 3/4 of the states to all agree to change the law. It's happening now with numerous groups. As mentioned, I'm a member of Wolf-Pac. (no spam) and it takes numbers to make things happen.

Billy's Little Trip wrote:The first order of business is to get money out of politics. This country is now under the control of billionaires, not the people. To overturn Citizens United, we need 3/4 of the states to all agree to change the law. It's happening now with numerous groups. As mentioned, I'm a member of Wolf-Pac. (no spam) and it takes numbers to make things happen.

Yep, that's the biggest thing that needs to happen, and also probably the hardest - which congressperson is going to want to just walk away from those millions of sweet reelection campaign dollars and SuperPAC funds that can be "reallocated" without oversight?

None of them. They can't. This is a game that you can't change unless you are in it. In order to work from the inside you have to BE on the inside, which means you must win election, which means you must compete, which means you have to take the money because it's available.

It's actually, literally, a case of "don't hate the player hate the game". The only way for anyone running for congress not to take money is if it's not available.

An aggravating joke that the Daily Show, which I normally love, likes to make on occasion is to take potshots at Democrats who take SuperPAC money after sponsoring campaign reform bills. While I stand there (because it makes me stand up) and scream at my TV: "THEY DON'T HAVE A CHOICE!!!!" Then Samantha Bee comes on and I'm happy again.

fluffy wrote:If anarchy were a system that worked in reality, then we'd never have developed governments in the first place

Good post except this line... did we really "develop" governments, or did opportunistic people dupe their peers out of their own natural freedoms? I certainly never authorized any other human being to have dominion over me, yet I have to submit to certain people because they supposedly have certain rights and powers that "normal" people don't.

I think the real problem with anarchy is what I mentioned already, there are horrible people who want to control others and take what they have, and do whatever they want at others' expense, with no consequences. </irony>

like a shark riding on an elephant's back, trampling and devouring everything in its path

Yes of course we fucking developed governments. It didn't just precipitate out of the goddamn ether.

This is not an attack.

Your reference to history books being written by dead people offers merit to his point. I always remind people that history is written by the winners.

It wouldn't have been called a civil war if the south had won, it would have been called a revolution.

I agree, humans are social creatures that congregate. In that congregation we naturally prefer order and our (RL) social network guides that culture's rules of conduct. (To a fault!) I would imagine that we developed a hierarchy out of natural leadership and knowledge, however good or bad that was.

But all the books tell us is the version of righteousness that those in charge wanted the future to hear. And governments have been evolving from that since.

United States of America has evolved the process even further.

Anarchy might not be ideal, but as JB pointed out (whether on purpose or not) is that the game is rigged to a point where it is impossible to devolve it when necessary.

I vote. I will always vote. It's my right of passage to bitch about the system because I've earned it. And it does change things, even if only a little bit and not in good ways. But do I think it will change things with the necessary capacity to move forward in a positive way? No.

I think that maybe our toilet needs to be flushed so another set of ideas can use the bathroom. Hopefully the next guest doesn't shit all over us.

Systems of government are cyclic and they build on one another and are often corrupted by interests that do whatever they can to game the system. What we have right now isn't a democracy, it's an oligarchy pretending to be a republic. But a sudden and drastic shift to anarchy won't solve anything.

My point earlier was that we started out naturally in anarchy. I agree with Mark that there is no natural form of government, and anarchy is nature. However, nature also doesn't have technology, infrastructure, roads, cars, computers, Internet, cellphones, large-scale food production, or any of the other things that are made possible by a larger system that ensures that people coordinate with each other instead of being selfishly self-interested.

If we were to wipe the slate clean and immediately replace it with something that's ACTUAL democracy, then I'd be all for that. Historically, ACTUAL democracy didn't scale (just because of the issues involved in counting votes and so on), but now that we have technological means of communication, it becomes much more feasible (although there's still a lot of tricky problems with black-box systems and corruption and collusion and so on).

Getting rid of government as a whole isn't flushing the toilet, it's knocking it down with a sledgehammer and then burning the house down and then spreading your shit everywhere to see what grows in it.

fluffy wrote:Systems of government are cyclic and they build on one another ...

Getting rid of government as a whole isn't flushing the toilet, it's knocking it down with a sledgehammer and then burning the house down and then spreading your shit everywhere to see what grows in it.